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Book Review of The Serpent's Shadow (Kane Chronicles)

The Serpent's Shadow (Kane Chronicles)
reviewed on + 12 more book reviews


So after lots of hemming and hawing and other books cutting their way to the front of my to-read line, I finally got around to reading this book. Honestly, I think my experience suffered because of how long I waited between #2 and this one. I wikipedia'd the first two synopses before I read this, and I remembered the important stuff (how annoying I found Sadie, how much I loved Bes and Bast and Tawaret) and I did figure it out pretty quickly, but there was some stuff that I just glanced over. It didn't really hurt my understanding of the book as a whole, but it would definitely have been a smarter choice to read them all closer together than I did.

So what did I think?

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

All in all, I was quite happy with the ending to this series. Some things changed that were the main reasons I preferred the Greek books so much more than this series (side characters, like the fabulous Walt, got fleshed out) but I also feel that Riordan wrote himself into a bit of a hole that absented some of his strongest characters in this series from the story for a good portion of it (i.e. Bes and Bast). I found the ending to the Anubis/Sadie/Walt love triangle surprisingly satisfying, and if I was still into writing fanfiction I would be all over the idea of one girl dating two men in one body. As usual, Riordan's women are just as abrasive and agitating as usual (except Tawaret who he writes as more of a mother and a joke and Bast who he characterizes as a cat as opposed to a woman) but I found Zia much more tolerable this go round and even grew a little bit fond of Sadie. Carter, on the other hand, who I loved from the beginning, let me down. The entire novel seemed to consist of "oh, crap, I can't do this! Okay, I'm doing this," rinse and repeat. I understood what Riordan was going for, I just found it a bit heavy handed.

And speaking of heavy handed, hmmmm, do you think there's going to be a sequel a la Heroes of Olympus? I could never guess. But to be fair, although I certainly wish he would focus a bit more on his Greek stories, I will definitely be picking up the newest book in the Egyptian series when it inevitably comes out. Here's hoping it focuses on Bes!